This latest post in our series of feature blogs introduces the first release of VQ Conference Manager DMA. This first release enables the creation of hierarchical Address Books/Directories, which are designed to replace the Phone Books feature of Cisco TelePresence Management Suite (TMS).
This functionality includes searchable numbers and addresses on your video endpoints, so you can dial the number by person or room name, rather than having to remember the number.
How to configure DMA’s address books and directories
The first thing you’ll notice, if you are familiar with the VQCM’s user interface, is the new design:
Throughout, you can change the order of the columns, turn them on and off and apply filters and so on.
To make a change or see the available options, use the ellipses on the right-hand side:
At the top level, we have the Tenant. Each Tenant has a dedicated Address Book/Directory and list of Devices.
Next, we have the list of Devices:
Each Device has two attributes, a Location and a Label:
Let’s have a look at the Location first:
If you are familiar with TMS, the Location here is analogous to the System Navigator Folder view in TMS. Here you can add new folders and add devices to a given folder within the hierarchy. Typically, you’d name your folders after the locations in your organisation, although you don’t have to
VQ DMA’s Locations are a very similar concept; a mechanism for you to define where in the organisation your endpoints are, and you can go to a depth of five within the hierarchy. This allows, for example, continents, country, state, city and building.
So, you add your Devices, you set your Locations and you add the Location to a device.
If you go back to the Devices, you’ll see another column called Labels:
Label is a new concept, which TMS does not have. Labels are free form text which allows you to add an additional identification to your device, for example “VIP Systems” or “Meeting Rooms”.
The next thing to look at are the Data Sources:
Out of the box there is a predefined Data Source called All Systems. There is no filter on it. It contains all Devices or Contacts in your database. In this example, the Devices in All Systems are shown as follows:
You can add as many Data Sources as you wish.
Finally, you have the Address Books. An Address Book is a list of Data Sources.
Let’s recap...
Devices have a Location and optionally a Label. Data Sources are built using filters on Location or Label and Address Books are built using Data Sources.
How to assign an Address Book to your Devices
The final part of setting up is similar to TMS – assigning an Address Book to your Devices.
To do this you Click on Assign to Devices, select the required filter and the Devices and assign them.
In this example, we have four devices in an Address Book called Parallel House. Each of the devices will be assigned this Address Book:
In this example, the location in the address book is also called Parallel House:
To make things simple to follow, we’ve also called the address book ‘Parallel House’.
Within the Address Book, we need to add a Data Source.
In this example we’ve named the Data Source Demo Suite, which contains the four endpoints in the ‘Parallel House’ Location:
Next, we need to assign the ‘Parallel House’ Address Book to each of the endpoints:
Having assigned the Address Book to the devices, what does this look like on the device itself?
Here you can see the device with the endpoints listed in the Parallel House Address Book.
This blog is just a very brief introduction of how to set up and use Address Books and Directory Services in VQ Conference Manager DMA. For more detailed information, view our ‘Introducing DMA – Directory Services’ video. If you have any questions, join our Webex Space.
Finally, for those looking for a more detailed understanding of VQ Conference Manager DMA’s capabilities, we offer a three-day training course delivered by our partner, TeKnowLogical Solutions.